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      Trump may be gone, but his big lie will linger. Here’s how we can fight it | Jonathan Freedland

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      The truth hurts, but lies kill. The past 12 months have demonstrated that with a terrifying clarity. Lies about Covid, insisting that it was a hoax cooked up by the deep state, led millions of people to drop their guard and get infected. And one big lie about the US election – claiming that Donald Trump had won, when he’d lost – led to the storming of the US Capitol and an eruption of violence that left five dead.The impact has been so swift, events rushing by in a blur, that it’s easy to miss the significance. On Wednesday, Donald Trump – already only the third US president in history to be impeached – was impeached again. In the first 222 years of the country’s existence, impeachment happened only once. Now that most severe, vanishingly rare of sanctions has struck twice in a single year.In the past, the impeachment process unfolded at a slow crawl: 11 months separated the day Bill Clinton vowed he’d never had “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky and the vote in the House of Representatives to try him for high crimes and misdemeanours. This time it happened in a week, the speed a function of two unusual circumstances: first, the accused has only days left in office; second, those House members were witnesses, Congress the scene of the crime.Unusual too is that this decision was not taken on wholly partisan lines. Ten Republicans broke ranks to put Trump in the dock. Though that only emphasises that 197 Republicans did not: they apparently find it acceptable for a president to incite a violent insurrection against the nation’s democratically elected assembly. Next comes a trial in the Senate. The conventional wisdom says that it will fail – that most Republican senators, terrified of their party’s Trump-worshipping base, will follow the lead of the 197 rather than the 10 – especially once Joe Biden is sworn in at noon on Wednesday and the urgent need to remove Trump from power has faded.Still, it’s possible that the cannier Senate Republicans will adopt the icy cynicism of Mitch McConnell – who briefed that he is open to convicting the president – and seize the chance to be rid of the Trump incubus once and for all. If enough of them vote guilty, then in a second vote the Senate can bar him from holding public office ever again. Ambitious Republicans, eyeing the 2024 contest, are already gaming out that scenario – some of them perhaps within Trump’s own family. Has Ivanka pulled out of attending Biden’s inauguration because she wants to remain viable with the base? If so, she’ll first have to contend with her brother, Donald Jr.And yet, even if Republican leaders manage both to banish Trump and prevent a dynastic succession, they will not be rid of him. It’s become a truism to say that Trumpism will linger, but there is an even more direct legacy that will hang around like a foul stench. That is the fiction that propelled those crowds to break into the halls of Congress: the big lie of the stolen election.“The lie outlasts the liar,” wrote the eminent historian of Nazism Timothy Snyder. If Trump’s supporters continue to believe that their man won big last November – and even now only 22% of Republicans consider the election free and fair – there is no reason why their anger at that theft should abate over the next four years. On the contrary, it will grow and fester, demanding payback in 2024, by force if necessary. Snyder notes darkly that 15 years separated the invention of the big lie that Germany lost the first world war thanks to a Jewish “stab in the back” and Adolf Hitler’s ascendancy to power. Myths endure.All of which raises a much bigger question than what to do with Donald Trump: what to do about the big lie and, more deeply, about the climate in which millions have come to believe it’s true. There has been much diagnosis of the post-truth phenomenon that Trump came to embody, but what about a remedy?A first requirement is to tailor the treatment. The philosopher Prof Quassim Cassam, author of a study of conspiracy theories and their appeal, distinguishes between the producers and consumers of such fictions. The pedlars of lies may have a casual, smirking insouciance towards the truth, but that’s not true of their audience. Those who stormed Congress were not dismissive of truth’s importance; on the contrary, they were prompted to act because of what they believed to have been a vital, hidden truth.The task, then, is not to restore public regard for veracity so much as to equip citizens to distinguish between what’s factually true and what is false. To that end, the philosopher has an unexpected suggestion. Get those who swallow conspiracy theories to ask of those supplying them the very questions they usually direct at the supposedly lying establishment: cui bono? Who benefits from this version of events? What’s their agenda? Except now they won’t be interrogating the BBC or the New York Times but the likes of Alex Jones and the disseminators of the QAnon fantasy. What exactly are they getting out of spinning these tales? A tidy profit, for one thing.Similarly, one might also ask the believers, what’s in it for you? How does believing the QAnon story that a Satan-worshipping ring of paedophiles controls the US government help you? How does it address any of the underlying problems in your life? If you feel life and opportunity have passed you by, how does subscribing to QAnon help? Perhaps it provides a spurious kind of explanation, but it doesn’t make your lot any better. Admittedly, a university professor is not perhaps the ideal carrier of that message. Better, says Cassam, might be a former conspiracy theorist, someone who has broken free.The most obvious corrective to lies are the facts that people can see with their own eyes. Few people still insist Covid is a hoax when they or a loved one are in intensive care. But the next best thing is verifiable information about your immediate community. It’s no accident that the rise of conspiracy thinking and post-truth has coincided with the decline of local news: 265 local titles have closed in the UK since 2005. Into that vacuum have rushed unverifiable, often abstract assertions about the state of the country or the world, spread by social media. With no full account of the reality around you to check against, those assertions can take root.The media is clearly central in all this. In the US, two separate epistemic universes now exist side by side – an MSNBC realm, in which Biden won fair and square; and a Fox News (and now Newsmax and One America News Network) one, in which Trump was robbed. In the US, it’s easy to succumb to nostalgia for the old “fairness doctrine” that demanded balance from the broadcast networks until it was scrapped under Ronald Reagan in 1987. If that were revived, and extended to cable, it might break down the divide, restoring at least a shared basis of agreed facts. Dream on, say the experts: that genie will not return to its bottle. Others suggest a more immediate fix: lobby advertisers to boycott fact-deniers such as Fox, starving them of funds.Still, cable news is only part of the story. Separate silos of knowledge exist and are entrenched just as much on Facebook and Twitter. A more realistic demand might be for external audits of those platforms, opening their algorithms in particular to public view, says the specialist in digital journalism Prof Emily Bell. Why not make transparent the process that ensures falsehoods spread six times faster than the truth on Twitter? While we’re at it, Bell suggests serious investment in the “civic infrastructure of knowledge”, from libraries to new forms of local reporting that might hold power to account.None of these ideas represents a perfect answer. The point is, the twin crises of Covid and Trump have exposed the mortal threat posed by lies and the long war on truth. Now the truth must defend itself – and fight back. More

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      Republicans must repudiate Trump – or live with the consequences forever | Geoffrey Kabaservice

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      A little more than a week ago, most Americans – perhaps even many of Donald Trump’s supporters – were ready for the 45th president and his administration to pass into the history books. Now Trump is making us all live through history.On 6 January, the US Capitol was sacked by a pro-Trump mob, the first large-scale occupation of the citadel of American democracy since the British burned it during the War of 1812. The mob succeeded in forcing Congress to evacuate and halting the constitutional ceremony of certifying the electoral college votes – another first. Now Trump, who was charged by the House of Representatives with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the riot that left five dead, has become the first president in history ever to be impeached twice.Ten Republicans in the House voted to impeach Trump, the largest number of lawmakers ever to support impeaching a president from their own party. But then, in the words of Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming who holds the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the constitution.”Trump is unlikely to become the first president removed from office, since the outgoing Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, won’t reconvene the Senate until the day before Joe Biden will be sworn in as the next president. But if the Senate does eventually vote to convict Trump, he will become the first ex-president ever to be barred from holding any future federal office.McConnell has, shockingly, told colleagues that he is open to convicting Trump. In the view of many party strategists, Republicans might be better off if Trump were prevented from running again. The possibility of a 2024 Trump campaign freezes out potential successors and prevents the party from moving in new and more positive directions. The president arguably cost his party its Senate majority with his lies and conspiracy theories about the election, which depressed Republican turnout in the pivotal Georgia senatorial races. His role in inciting the Capitol riot disgraced his party as well as his legacy. Tellingly, almost no Republicans attempted to defend him during the impeachment hearings. Instead, many warned that impeachment would further enrage Trump’s followers when what’s needed is national unity and healing.Of course, this come-together plea is rank hypocrisy from those who encouraged Trump’s shredding of the social fabric, believing that his attempt to tear the country apart would leave them with the bigger half. The claim that lions would lie down with lambs if Democrats would drop their vindictive harassment of the outgoing president conveniently overlooks the fact that the Capitol invasion happened only because Trump pushed the Big Lie that Democrats, the media, and the Deep State stole the election. And nearly two-thirds of Republicans in Congress made themselves complicit in Trump’s lie by voting to overturn the election results, even in the wake of that deluded, destructive and deadly riot.Representative Peter Meijer, a newly elected Republican from Michigan who was one of the 10 Republicans to vote for impeachment, observed that many of his party colleagues argued that since millions of Americans believe the election was stolen, therefore Congress would be justified in preventing Biden from taking the presidency. But, he pointed out, most of the voters who believe in this false reality do so precisely because they have heard it from Trump and his congressional enablers. “That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make it accurate. It means that you lied to them, and they trusted you and they believed your lies.”Nonetheless, 45% of Republican voters, according to a recent YouGov poll, approve of the storming of the Capitol. And that’s largely because 72% of Republicans, according to another survey, say that they don’t trust the accuracy of the 2020 election results.So long as millions of Americans believe in Trump’s Big Lie, the country becomes ungovernable and civil war beckons. If you believe what Trump and his Republican enablers tell you, you will consider Joe Biden to be “an illegitimate president”, as Trump put it in his 6 January speech, and the members of his administration to be usurpers. Why then should you pay taxes to such a government or respect its laws? Why wouldn’t you support the violent overthrow of that government, even if that revolutionary vanguard was led by the kind of neo-fascists who planned the Capitol invasion and erected a gallows outside? As Representative Meijer observed, the logical conclusion of this line of thinking makes it likely that we’ll see “political assassinations or some type of additional attempts to take lives by the folks who feel emboldened by what’s happened”.Most of Trump’s supporters would probably recoil from the charge that they’re pushing America toward civil war and revolutionary carnage. To accept the Big Lie, however, requires you to believe that the entire US justice system, in which even Trump-nominated judges rejected every baseless claim of electoral fraud asserted by his legal team, is also part of the conspiracy. And such a widespread rejection of courts and the law would shatter the political and social stability on which the country’s free-market capitalism depends.Unsurprisingly, many corporations and institutions have cut ties with Trump and his businesses and suspended contributions to those congressional Republicans who challenged Biden’s victory. Many of the party’s mega-donors have also turned off the cash spigot, worrying about reputational damage from being seen to support Trump’s false election claims and the ensuing Capitol riot.If the party has an ideology it’s what the French call je-m’en-foutisme, a contemptuous indifference toward othersWhat, really, does the Republican party believe in now other than the imperative of maintaining Trump in power? So long as the party clings to Trump’s Lost Cause, it rejects business, law and order, national unity, the constitution, fiscal responsibility, traditional morality, democratic norms and nearly everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for.If the party has an ideology it’s what the French call je-m’en-foutisme, a contemptuous indifference toward others. It was exemplified by the House Republicans during the Capitol siege who, sheltering with colleagues in a secure location, mocked requests that they wear masks; now three of the Democratic lawmakers who were there have become infected with Covid-19. If Trump’s Republican party has a motto, it’s the Arizona state Republican chair Kelli Ward’s urging the president to “Cross the Rubicon” – that is, to imitate Julius Caesar’s treasonous action that led to civil war and the collapse of the Roman Republic.If there is to be civil war, one hopes that it will be bloodless and confined to the Republican party. The party needs to separate itself from those who undermine our civil order by maintaining that Democrats stole the election. The Republican lawmakers who voted against certifying the election should be given off-ramps, perhaps in the form of opportunities to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy. The party should support efforts like the new Republican Accountability Project to channel donations to legislators who face primary challenges as a result of voting for Trump’s impeachment or removal. The party should make sincere efforts to persuade its base voters to return to reality. And it should accept and perhaps facilitate the departure of the worst bitter-enders into the political wasteland of a third party.Democrats and others who have little love for the Republican party may rejoice that Trump has brought it so low. But just as the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, warned that the government could not stand as a house divided, the country cannot now endure if one of the two major political parties rejects the legitimacy of the other when it wins elections and attempts to govern. It has to become a country with two more-or-less normal parties or none. If Trump-inspired radicalism on the right isn’t checked by responsible actors on both sides, history will record this moment as the beginning of the end of American democracy.Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party More

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      'Kids can handle hard truths': teachers and their students reckon with capitol attack

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      Fifteen-year-old Sevan Minassian-Godner’s brain struggled to process the images of violent, pro-Trump insurrectionists defacing the Capitol.The scene reminded the Berkeley high school sophomore of a movie, maybe the Hunger Games. Not the unbreakable idea of American democracy he’s grown up learning about from pop culture, books and Hollywood.“One thing I remember going through my mind was, how could people do this? How is it possible?” he said. “To see on live television this revolt to a fair election really opened my eyes to how just awful right now our world is getting.”From Berkeley to Milwaukee to Maryland, young people are coming to terms with last week’s violence that left five dead and a president impeached for the second time. And right alongside, teachers are having to answer thorny questions about democracy, race, policing and where the country goes from here.Many teachers say kids have been remarkably resilient and curious about the events at the Capitol. They have also noticed that many of their students of color, sadly, did not find the scene shocking.The violence has taught students some tough lessons about the America they are coming of age in – one that has normalized political division and proved time and again that all citizens are not treated equally under the law. It’s important not to shy away from these conversations in the classroom, and to place events in context, educators say.“Reactionary violence is a thread in our nation’s history,” says Oscar Ramos, a ninth-grade history and government teacher in Maryland. “When people say they don’t understand how it could happen, that’s not true. We have to be clear-eyed in the history of our country to make sense of the events for kids. I believe they can handle being entrusted with hard truths.”A lesson in inequalityFew schools may be better positioned to help students unpack the conversation than Berkeley High, located in Berkeley, California, a cradle of progressive activism where discussions about white supremacy, voter suppression and toxic masculinity are woven into the ninth-grade curriculum.As events unfolded at the Capitol, Sevan’s mom, Hasmig Minassian, who teaches the freshmen seminar, said she and co-teachers quickly pivoted from a planned lesson on gender.After starting by defining terms like coup, sedition, insurrection, domestic terrorist and treason, teachers framed the day’s class by reminding students that what they had just seen was unprecedented.Then teachers presented contrasting images: photos of Black Lives Matter protesters doused with pepper-spray by militarized police forces, juxtaposed with images of a Capitol police officer taking a selfie with a rioter, or peacefully escorting an older intruder out of the building.In the images, students took note of the fact that unlike other political movements they have studied, this one seemed mostly devoid of young people, made up of instead of older white males – people who students described as being baited into violence by the very president they trusted, Minassian said.“Kids are really attuned to the fairness of things,” she said. “Forget left or right – they’re all about sniffing out what’s fair or unfair. And I think they saw a group of people being taken advantage of by Trump, and were really curious about the punishment for breaking into the building, or Nancy Pelosi’s office, then posting photos of it.”But to Minassian, what stands out most was how most students found the events troubling, but not unexpected.“It made me a little sad to hear how unsurprised the students were. I had to pick up more adults from the floor than kids that day,” Minassian said.For students of color, she added, the differential treatment by police was a reality they already understood. “Seeing burly white men assaulting the halls of government, with representatives hiding under their desks in fear, it didn’t feel that different from what they feel just walking down the street and passing a cop. It was like: welcome to my world.”‘Don’t shy away from hard conversations’Across the country in Montgomery county, Maryland, not far from the Capitol attack, Oscar Ramos started Thursday’s discussion with historical context, reminding students that democracy wasn’t meant for people of color when the country was first founded by white men, some of them slave owners, and how racialized violence is a recurring theme in US history.That day, in fact, the class had been scheduled to discuss Black Wall Street, a thriving center of Black culture and commerce that in 1921 was looted and destroyed by a white mob in what became known as the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the deadliest racist attacks in US history.Ramos recalls pausing frequently as he led an open discussion about the Capitol attack, choosing words carefully so as not to alienate students whose narratives conflicted with those he presented. As a Latino teacher, Ramos worries about accusations of bias in the content he teaches. But, he said, choosing not to talk about racial violence is a form of bias, too.Janine Domingues, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute who specializes in helping children and families who have been affected by trauma, said it was important to be truthful when talking with children about the events at the Capitol, even if it means leaving out graphic details and keeping explanations simple.“For children, it’s important to check in on what they’re feeling and offer reassurance. ‘I know what you’re seeing is scary, but we’re safe right now,’” Domingues said. Children of color and those from marginalized communities may feel particularly vulnerable and targeted in the wake of racialized events, she added.Older children and teenagers may be ready for an open dialogue about what the events mean for the country, she said, though adults will still want to filter information and guide the conversation.“I think it’s a tremendous growth opportunity and a chance to give students skills for how to process what’s happening,” Domingues said. “As long as we don’t shy away from these hard conversations.”‘You have control over your actions’Those hard conversations were under way last week in the midwestern city of Milwaukee, as David Castillo, a planning assistant with the school district’s office of Black and Latino male achievement, helped lead a dialogue with the students he mentors.Castillo said students keyed in on how differently police had handled Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.“I could see the wheels turning in their heads, the cognitive dissonance that comes from recognizing the hypocrisy of that the same group that shouted ‘Blue Lives Matter’ are now attacking police,” Castillo said.“As Black and brown kids from inner-city Milwaukee, they know how law enforcement responds. It’s like: I already believed this, and now I have tangible evidence,’ he said.One fifth-grade teacher in Milwaukee, who asked not to be identified, said she was “blown away” by the level of engagement and sophistication with which her students discussed last week’s events.Part of the morning was dedicated to helping students recognize misinformation by comparing sources, a skill that she says educators have a moral obligation to equip students with. But most of the time was devoted to open discussion – one that lasted three hours.One student connected the apparent complicity by some of the Capitol police to the lack of Latino representation in textbooks. Others expressed fear, she said, asking whether the politicians in the Capitol were safe or if they had been kidnapped, or what could happen during Joe Biden’s inauguration.“I had to be honest that I shared those concerns about further conflict,” she said “I thought it would be more powerful if I was real with them.”Across town, on the city’s north side, first-grade teacher Angela Harris focused Thursday’s class on empathy and emotional regulation, using rioters’ actions as an example on how not to react.To make the discussion concrete, she tied it to the mock elections held previously in class – which Joe Biden won – and asked how they would feel if someone was so upset by the results they tore up the classroom. Students were indignant, she said. They immediately wanted to know what consequences such a person would face.Every student in Harris’s class is Black. Even at six years old, students noticed that police seemed to respond differently to the white mob than the ways they have seen cops behave in their community. Milwaukee has one of the highest incarceration rates in the US for Black men. More than half of all Black men living in Milwaukee county have been incarcerated before they reach 40, according to a 2013 study by UW-Milwaukee.“They have a fear of police even at five or six years old. It’s part of their everyday life,” Harris said. “For some of them that was the first time they might have seen white people interact with police,” she said.Harris said she didn’t dive deeply into this thread – they’ve already seen enough disparities just living in Milwaukee, she said, one of the nation’s most segregated cities – choosing instead to focus on the skills they could grow.“I want them to understand that at any moment, you have to be the one the who has control over your actions. And what happened at the Capitol is a perfect example of folks not being able to control their emotions.” More

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      The Guardian view on Trump's second impeachment: urgent and necessary | Editorial

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      The wheels of justice are slowly but remorselessly closing in on Donald Trump and his gang. Mr Trump’s second impeachment is unprecedented in two extraordinary ways. No other president in American history has been institutionally censured with a second impeachment. Mr Trump must now carry this unique double burden of disgrace into history. But the second impeachment has also been the most rapidly crafted of them all. That is because, unlike its predecessors, it is an urgent response to a clear and present danger to American democracy.Only last week, Mr Trump was still actively using the presidential bully pulpit to promote his lies about the 2020 election result and urge his supporters to march on the US Capitol to challenge the vote. Today, rightly cut off from his social media following and in the wake of a 232-197 congressional vote against him on Wednesday, he is ineluctably becoming a humbled – though never a humble – figure. Mr Trump remained defiant and mendacious in a White House video this week, but he now faces a second Senate trial and the very real prospect, if he is found guilty, of being barred from holding office ever again. This is not the future that Mr Trump planned for himself.A year ago, when Mr Trump was first impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the vote to put him on trial went almost wholly along party lines. This week, in the second impeachment, party loyalty was still very strong, but there were significant shifts and cracks within the Republican party. Ten House Republicans voted with the Democrats, including the third most senior in the party leadership, Liz Cheney. Several others, notably the party’s House leader, Kevin McCarthy, tried to triangulate between a previously unthinkable readiness to denounce Mr Trump and a long-familiar reluctance to stand up to him by voting for impeachment. Nevertheless, the majority of Republicans, who a week ago had also voted to challenge a number of electoral college results, again remained cravenly loyal to Mr Trump.Yet Mr Trump’s grip on the Republican party is slowly beginning to loosen. This is partly because some newly announced sceptics in the party have finally found their voices as the clock nears midnight for the Trump presidency. The most significant of these is Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, who has worked in lockstep with the Trump White House for the past four years. Recently re-elected for another six-year Senate term, he now hints that he is pleased about the impeachment and may even vote for it in a trial. It is an opportunity that he should give himself, by supporting an early scheduling.As ever with Senator McConnell, there is political calculation at work here. But he is not alone in that. Democrats were rightly outraged at what happened on 6 January. But their grip on the House was reduced in November and the Senate is evenly balanced, so impeachment may help them leverage fresh support in next year’s midterm elections, to which many minds have now turned. Democrats have an interest in making Republican candidates choose between condemning or backing Mr Trump. Those who condemn him may face selection challenges from the right, perhaps splitting the vote; those who support him will be targeted as lackeys of a disgraced president. It could prove a win-win approach.These have been 10 days that shook the world. Mr Trump’s incitement of an insurrectionary assault on the Capitol that led to five deaths was a terrible act. An exceptional assault on democracy had to be met with an exceptional display of resolution and retribution. The present and future safety of the republic demanded no less. It had to be a response that recognised the seriousness of what happened on 6 January and one that, at the same time, reasserted the authority of the constitution. The House of Representatives has done that. It has cleansed the stables. The response reflects well on the strength of America’s institutions and public values. The stage is now set for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to lead America towards a different kind of future – if they can do it and if the country is willing to follow. More

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      How Trump reacted to two very different impeachments – video report

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      Donald Trump has become the first president in US history to be impeached twice after the bipartisan vote in the House of Representative accusing him of inciting violence at the Capitol on 6 January.
      Trump has faced impeachment before, but for very different reasons. On 18 December 2019 the House charged him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and withholding military aid
      Impeachment puts Trump in first place among lords of misrule More

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      The US Capitol riot risks supercharging a new age of political repression | Akin Olla

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      Following the fascist riot at the US Capitol, progressives and liberals have begun to mimic the calls for “law and order” of their conservative counterparts, even going as far as threatening to expand the “war on terror”. While this may be well-intentioned, it fits neatly within the trajectory of attacks against civil liberties over the last two decades. A Biden administration with a 50-50 Senate will seek unity and compromise wherever it can find it, and oppressing political dissidents will be the glue that holds together Biden’s ability to govern.A wide array of actors within the United States government have long predicted, and begun to prepare for, a new age of protests and political instability. In 2008 the Pentagon launched the Minerva Initiative, a research program aimed at understanding mass movements and how they spread. It included at least one project that conflated peaceful activists with “supporters of political violence” and deemed that they were worth studying alongside active terrorist organizations.All the pieces are in place for Biden to attempt to unite the parties by being a ‘law and order’ presidentA 2018 war game enacted by the Pentagon had students and faculty at military colleges create plans to crush a rebellion led by disillusioned members of Gen Z. This hypothetical “ZBellion” included a “global cyber campaign to expose injustice and corruption”. A campaign that would in real life no doubt be monitored by the NSA’s Prism program, which captures the vast majority of electronic communications in the United States. Prism was developed in 2007, partially out of fear that environmental disasters might lead to a rise in anti-government protest.These steps further the already oppressive post-9/11 surveillance apparatus developed through the Patriot Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation championed by President-Elect Biden. Though some of these tools were developed to “fight terrorism”, in practice they’ve also been used to monitor and interfere with the work of activists – leading to violations of civil liberties such as the placement of undercover NYPD officers in Muslim student groups across the north-east. And every post-9/11 president has added to this, steadily increasing federal and local agencies’ power to surveil, detain and prosecute those who appear to pose a challenge to the status quo.This level of repression is also being carried out by states. Since 2015, 32 states have passed laws designed to discourage and punish those who engage in boycotts against Israel. Many states have also worked to dismantle once-institutionalized statewide student associations such as the Arizona Student Association and the United Council of Wisconsin, in one blow destroying opposition to tuition hikes and eradicating an important ally to social movements, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.Republicans have long called for the increased repression of activists, but the chorus has reached a crescendo in the age of Black Lives Matter and climate protestsRepublicans have long called for the increased repression of activists, but the chorus has reached a crescendo in the age of Black Lives Matter and climate protests. In the last five years, 116 bills to increase penalties for protests including highway shutdowns and occupations have been introduced in state legislatures. Twenty-three of those bills became law in 15 states. Following the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent uprisings, we’ve seen another flow of proposals. For example, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida would like to make merely participating in a protest that leads to property damage or road blockage a felony, while granting protections to people who hit those same protesters with their cars. Following the storming of the Capitol, DeSantis, a Trump ally, has expanded these proposals with more provisions and harsher consequences. The only thing preventing the passage of many of these laws thus far has been opposition from Democrats.But now the Democrats have caught the tune and returned to their post-9/11 calls for heightening the “war on terror”. Joe Biden has already made it clear that he intends to answer these calls. He has named the rioters “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists”, both terms used to designate those whose civil liberties the state is openly allowed to violate. He has declared he will make it a priority to pass a new law against domestic terrorism and has named the possibility of creating a new White House post to combat ideologically inspired violent extremists.These moves are not to be taken as empty threats by Biden. All the pieces are in place for him to attempt to unite the parties by being a “law and order” president and effectively crush any social movement that opposes the status quo. Much of the Patriot Act itself was based on Biden’s 1995 anti-terrorism bill, and Biden would go on to complain that the Patriot Act didn’t go far enough after a few of his provisions to further increase the power of police to surveil targets were removed. Biden will be desperate to both prove his competency and demonstrate that he isn’t the protest-coddler that Trump framed him as. This, combined with demands for repression from Democrats, Republicans and large segments of the American public, is a perfect storm for a radical escalation in the decades-long war on civil liberties and our right to protest, at a time that we need it the most. More

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      Washington DC braces as thousands of National Guard move in for inauguration day

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      The National Guard has started to move into Washington en masse in an attempt to prevent violence in the run up to the inauguration of Joe Biden next week. As Congress acted to impeach Donald Trump on Wednesday and the president urged his supporters to shun violence, the National Guard started to deploy 20,000 troops in the US capital.At Trump’s inauguration in 2016, the figure was about 8,000.The National Guard are on a 24-hour watch in the US Capitol after last week’s violence, with off-duty members catching naps in hallways and below the bust of General George Washington. Riot shields and gas masks were piled in the hallways, with large numbers of Guard members in fatigues and carrying rifles stationed around the exterior of the building.Troops have been present at the seat of Congress since at least Friday but more were due to arrive before inauguration day, according to the city’s acting police chief Robert Contee.The preparations continued as Trump said in in a White House statement: “In light of reports of more demonstrations, I urge that there must be no violence, no lawbreaking and no vandalism of any kind. That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for.”New fencing and other security measures have also gone up around the building, a global symbol of democracy. A seven-foot (two-metre) high fence has been erected around the Capitol, with metal barriers and National Guard troops protecting the congressional office buildings that surround it.Roads near the Capitol have been closed, and the National Park Service has closed the Washington Monument to tours. Mayor Muriel Bowser has asked visitors to stay away.“The attack on the Capitol was a violent insurrection that resulted in the spilling of American blood,” said US Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York. “And that’s why extraordinary security measures have been taken.“Officers were brutally beaten. The attackers wanted to assassinate Nancy Pelosi, hang Mike Pence, and hunt down sitting members of Congress. That’s insurrection. That’s sedition. That’s lawlessness. That’s terror,” he said.Washington’s subway system said it would close 13 stations from Friday through to 21 January – including Union Station, a major transit hub. It is also closing the three busiest downtown stations.Steve Dickson, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, on Wednesday signed an order vowing a “zero-tolerance approach” to any disruptive air passengers after some Trump supporters caused problems on flights after the Capitol rampage. The order will last until 30 March.Home-sharing giant Airbnb and subsidiary HotelTonight were cancelling all reservations in Greater Washington during the inauguration week.National Guard troops have been frequently used by states to help law enforcement quell protests over the past year. However, the decision to arm them at the Capitol highlights fears about the threat of further violence in the days leading up to the inauguration.Officials have said it is important for the troops to be armed for their self defence and that they are still playing a supporting role to law enforcement officers. However, two officials said some National Guard troops were deputised as Capitol Police officers to carry out law enforcement functions if needed.“The Capitol has responded in an appropriate way to meet the nature of the severe security threat that is being posed by domestic terrorists and white supremacists,” said Jeffries.He said the National Guard already had been considered as part of the security bubble for the inauguration but, based on the events of last week, the security had been ratcheted up.Acting US attorney general Jeffrey Rosen warned against further attacks and urged the public to come forward with tips about potential attacks and threats before the inauguration, including “attempts to forcefully occupy government buildings”. More

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      The 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump

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      Ten Republican members of the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump over the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, making it the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in US history.
      The break with the president stood in sharp contrast to the unanimous support for Trump among House Republicans when he was first impeached by Democrats in 2019.
      All Democrats who voted supported impeachment, while 197 Republicans voted no.
      The Republican votes made it a historic moment. In comparison, five Democrats voted to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998.
      How the Senate will fall on Trump’s second impeachment trial vote remains to be seen. Two-thirds of the 100-member body are required to convict a president, meaning 17 Republicans would have to join Democrats to render a guilty verdict. So far only a small number of Republican senators have indicated an openness to convicting the president in a senate trial, which is now set to begin after Biden’s inauguration. Mitch McConnell, the top-ranking Republican in the Senate, indicated to colleagues that he is undecided on how he would vote.
      Below are the Republicans who voted for impeachment in the House of Representatives:
      Liz Cheney More